


Break

by iammemyself



Series: Arkhamverse [6]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games), Batman: Arkham - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:15:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26326237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iammemyself/pseuds/iammemyself
Summary: Jonathan was in desperate need of fries.  Getting them was hard enough without what came after.
Relationships: Jonathan Crane/Edward Nygma
Series: Arkhamverse [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/647603
Comments: 5
Kudos: 30





	Break

**Break**

**By Indiana**

**Characters: Jonathan Crane, Edward Nygma [Scriddler]**

**Synopsis: Jonathan was in desperate need of fries. Getting them was hard enough without what came after.**

-

It was somewhat fitting that the first thing Jonathan had tried to do after his long and arduous illness had gone so badly so quickly.

“What do you mean, you’re out of fries?” he asked for the second or third time. “I can see them. They’re right there.” Four red cartons of them, clearly waiting patiently under the heating lamp for someone to order them. 

The bored-looking cashier in front of him shrugged. “We’re out.”

“Who are you attempting to fool, exactly?” Edward said from his left. “He can see them. I can see them. That lout in the back of the line you’re holding up with your idiocy-induced blindness can see them. Give the man his fries.”

“I can’t,” the cashier said.

“Why not?” Jonathan asked tiredly. This wasn’t supposed to have taken this long. He was supposed to have been able to enter, purchase his fries, and then exit. Why had such a simple thing become so _difficult_?

“They’re taken.”

“No they aren’t,” Jonathan snapped, what was left of his patience leaving him entirely. “I’ve been here for ten minutes, eight of which you spent on your phone ignoring me.”

“No I didn’t,” said the cashier, glancing down at the phone she had slotted beneath the register.

“Yes, you did,” said Edward, leaning on the counter using his left elbow. “I’ve also been here for ten minutes, all but the last thirty seconds of which you have also been ignoring me for.”

“They’re right, you did,” piped up the woman with the stroller behind him. “Can you give him the fries now?”

“We’re out of fries,” insisted the cashier. That was when a teenager in sagging jeans and baggy sweatshirt walked in, cut through the middle of the line, and draped herself over the empty stretch of counter meant for the transition of orders. The cashier promptly packaged up the cartons of fries and handed them over.

“Thanks, man,” the teenager said, collecting the paper bag and waltzing back out, and Jonathan barely had the strength to watch as she went. Edward reached into his coat pocket and removed his cigarette case.

“Seriously?” someone behind him said in exasperation, and the cashier shrugged and looked at Jonathan again.

“We’re out of fries,” she said. “You want something else?”

“No!” Jonathan snapped, the fervour in his own voice taking him by surprise. “I don’t!”

“Then can you move over? There’s a lot of people behind you.”

“You can’t just _save_ things for your _friends_ ,” Jonathan said, barely able to resist the need to rest his head against the glass case which was supposed to contain cookies. He had the feeling he should just drop it and leave, but it was hard to think. His chest ached and he kept having to blink black spots out of his vision. The only thing keeping him standing was the hands he’d pressed against the counter what felt like hours ago.

“Dude, you can’t smoke in here,” the cashier said, and Jonathan looked to his left to see that Edward had, in fact, taken out a cigarette and lit it. He looked unimpressed by the cashier’s words.

“Stop me,” he said without removing it from his mouth. “Dude.”

The teenager turned away from the register. “Keltie!”

“Oh, so there _is_ a manager here,” Edward said. He put a hand on Jonathan’s arm, and Jonathan looked at him almost automatically. “Go back to the truck,” he murmured. “I’ll take care of this.”

Edward had been taking care of everything for a while now. Jonathan should have been able to do this himself, but he didn’t have the strength. He needed to sit down. He wouldn’t have had to if they would have just given him the damned fries, but now he had to go to his truck and wait for Edward to return as though it were twenty years from now and he needed to be taken care of.

Twenty years suddenly struck him as… wishful thinking. The thought of any sort of long-term future at all was sort of… ephemeral in its bare existence. That might have had something to do with how difficult it was just then to gather his thoughts. It didn’t matter. In the here and now all Jonathan could do was nod and turn around and leave. 

He knew why they had parked so far away from the building, but right now he wished they hadn’t. Everything hurt and it was hard to breathe. He hadn’t been ready to go out. What he would have done were Edward not there, he didn’t know.

When he finally made it to his truck, his hands were shaking so badly he couldn’t open the door. He pressed his forehead against the top of it. Every inch of him felt as though it had been flooded with a deep and powerful weakness. It could have been caused by anything. Lack of food, lack of sleep. Leaving Edward’s too early.

No. No, he’d had to leave Edward’s. He had been getting too content there, too _okay_ with the easy comfort that came with allowing someone to take control of every facet of his life. Edward had for months made sure he was fed and clean and warm, and Jonathan had not had to do anything other than continue clinging to a life that had never held anything more than pain.

That wasn’t true. It was mostly true, but that wasn’t good enough.

He made his way around the side of the truck, gripping the edge of the bed as he went, before lowering himself to sit in the back. The liftgate had broken off and been replaced and broken off again, and for the latter he was glad. He wouldn’t have been able to get it down in his current state.

He hadn’t thought about that when he’d left Edward’s. He hadn’t thought about anything other than the sudden, incessant need to recover his independence. And once he’d gotten it, he’d tried to go back to the way things had been. It had taken three days to discover his former lifestyle was now unsustainable. He was no longer strong enough to subsist solely on will and strong coffee, or to think through the brain fog which came when he gave into the insomnia, or even just to sit in a chair that was too high over a table that was too short. He had done all of those things once, and many like them, but now they were all of them impossible.

Batman had watched Croc snatch away his life and he had done nothing.

Jonathan’s independence was gone. He was coming to realise that he had given it away some years back: from the day he had asked Edward to take Jonathan with him when it came time to leave Gotham behind. Jonathan had placed his future in that man’s hands over a decade ago and had not thought about it since, not even to so much as consider what he was going to do if Edward changed his mind.

What was _taking_ him so long? This trip had culminated in failure and Jonathan wanted to go home. At least there he could attempt to sleep off the gnawing ache in his belly. Wait. No. He couldn’t. Not after what had happened that morning. He could not go anywhere to do anything. All he had left was this truck. It was all he’d ever had. 

And Edward, he reminded himself. His refusal to allow Jonathan to die had proven his intentions several times over. And there was one thing Edward always had that would be good enough for now.

“Where the hell were you?” Jonathan snapped when he reappeared.

“Talking to the manager,” said Edward. “She seemed to believe her employment was a great deal more secure than it was.”

“You had her _fired_?” That seemed a bit… pedestrian for him.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Give me a cigarette,” Jonathan said, holding his hand out palm up for one without lifting his head. He could actually _feel_ Edward’s hesitation as though it were a living thing.

“Jonathan, I… can’t,” he protested. Jonathan glared at him from beneath his brows.

“Edward, I am not in the mood for your baseless delusions. I have not eaten or slept in three days, my entire body aches horribly, Firefly burned down my apartment building this afternoon leaving _all_ of my research in cinders, and on top of that it turns out the toxin I was working on actually makes people _joyful_ when superheated into an aerosol. All I wanted was some damned French fries and I couldn’t even have that. Give me a cigarette before I lose my mind.”

Edward wordlessly removed one from his cigarette case and handed it and a lighter both to Jonathan, but Edward had to light it for him because his hands were shaking too much. “I’ll be back,” he said, though Jonathan was a bit beyond caring where he went at the moment. He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled as though his life depended on it… which turned out to be a horrible decision, because of his recent lung damage. He started coughing so much it was a miracle he managed not to drop it. It had the intended effect of curbing his hunger but the unintended one of making him a little nauseous. He had not expected the cigarette to be so strong. It hadn’t been so the last time he’d asked for one. Edward _did_ smoke to self-medicate, then. He shook his head and inhaled a little more reasonably. Of the vices Edward could have chosen, this was somehow the least harmful.

Having had enough, he tossed it over the side of the bed and eased himself into the back of the bed, leaning his head against the cab. So many problems, so few solutions. So many things to do between now and the date of his revenge. He needed another couple of days to recover before starting something of this scale. He was not yet in the mindset required to take on the Bat. He had left Edward’s only four days ago and already the world had collapsed around him. He hadn’t yet regained enough strength. The problem was that he did not know how much he had left. He had nearly died and the extensive damage to his body was not something that could be willed away. Not for very long, at least.

Edward returned, clambering into the bed to sit against the storage box. “Here,” Edward said, putting something into his hand, which was…

“Where did you get these?” Jonathan asked in bewilderment, looking away from the container of fries. Edward shrugged and pulled out the other item in the bag he’d come back with, which was a sandwich wrapped in waxed paper.

“Some guy parked over there.”

“That must have been the pettiest crime you ever committed,” Jonathan said, feeling a strange relief come over him. Something _had_ gone right today.

“It just may have been.” Edward unwrapped the sandwich far enough he could bite into it without having to touch it. Jonathan could not see very much, given they had parked away from any streetlamps, but he thought it was the fish sandwich. “Good Lord. This is disgusting.” He took another bite of it anyway. “People _pay_ to eat this?”

“You’ve never had McDonald’s before?” He was probably the only man on this side of the world who could say such a thing. Edward deliberately finished chewing what was in his mouth.

“When I was poor,” he said, “it was the only place I could afford to eat out. And I only went if I was with a bunch of other people who were going. After hockey games, usually. But you… you were poorer still. So much so that it was actually a treat and not a reminder of just how much you couldn’t have.”

Jonathan was not surprised he had figured it out. “Very astute,” he said. “What did you base that conclusion on?”

Edward folded back some more of the wrapper. He seemed almost as though he didn’t want to answer.

“It’s the first thing you’ve wanted to eat in a long time.”

He’d never been much for it, and much less so throughout the duration of his illness. Poverty and scarcity had had their benefits, strange though that assertion was, but the fatal blow they had dealt to Jonathan’s appetite was not one of them. Perhaps he should work on that. He knew there were things that would come easier were he not so thin. Sleep being one of them. He was so tired of not being able to sleep.

Edward was chewing on the last of the sandwich and crumpling up the wrapper with one hand, which he then pitched into the darkness. After a minute Jonathan decided to ask,

“What did you used to have?”

“Hm?” Edward’s attention was already on the phone he’d removed from his jacket pocket. 

“When you went to McDonald’s with the hockey…” Had he been on a team or had he just dabbled in it on the street? Jonathan had never asked.

“Oh.” He rubbed at the side of his nose with his gloved index finger. “Nuggets with honey.”

“I’ve never tried that.”

“It’s not any better than anything else on the menu.” He sat up a little straighter. “I’ve texted you the address of a penthouse in Chinatown you can have.”

“A penthouse,” said Jonathan, trying to gauge how many fries he had left. “That strikes me as a bit fancy.”

“Fancy means you won’t be bothered,” Edward told him. “And the GCPD will be here in ten minutes.”

He’d be done by then.

It wasn’t until he had finished eating that he realised Edward had become uncharacteristically quiet. He had also put his phone away and was just sort of staring off into the distance. Jonathan could not see his face, which limited his deductive abilities severely. “Eddie?”

Edward took a breath. “Are you coming back with me?”

“For tonight.” Edward’s dismount from the back of the truck lacked panache. “Would you like me to drive?”

“It _is_ your truck.”

So Jonathan eased himself into the driver’s seat as Edward pushed the contents of the passenger side onto the floor and stared at the rusting seatbelt with something approaching despondence. “It works,” Jonathan said. “You just need to –“

“I know,” Edward interrupted shortly, and Jonathan did not appreciate being snapped at but now was not the time to argue with him about it.

“Where are we going?”

Edward directed him to what had once been an orphanage, which was a bit of a strange choice for him. When Jonathan asked after it, all he said was,

“It has a lot of rooms.”

Jonathan frowned at the dark road in front of him. “Why do you need so many?”

Edward’s sigh bordered insolence. “Would it make a difference if I told you?”

“Is there a reason you don’t want to?” asked Jonathan, puzzled. Edward usually loved to go on for hours about every minute detail of his grand and elaborate plans, whether Jonathan was paying attention or not.

Edward shrugged and looked out of his window. He didn’t say anything else, which left Jonathan uncharacteristically feeling as though _he_ should talk. He didn’t, though. He merely continued as he had been directed in silence. If he’d known it was going to be this far, he wouldn’t have volunteered to drive. The clutch was contributing to the steadily building pain in his leg, making it hard to concentrate on what he was doing. Thank God the orphanage was in sight now. He put his foot on the clutch to downshift so as to slow down before parking someplace on the lawn and a lightning pain drove itself all the way up into his teeth. For a moment he couldn’t feel anything other than the agony radiating out from his ruined knee. Time no longer mattered because it no longer existed. The pain was so bad he had lost the ability to see, but he couldn’t tell if he had gone temporarily blind or if the signal from his eyes was no longer making it to his brain. His breath also seemed to have gone, which probably was not helping.

“Jonathan!” Edward shouted in his ear, and something about the way he sounded genuinely terrified unlocked some part of Jonathan’s mind even though he was not quite back in reality just yet. He automatically jammed his foot on the brake and pulled the wheel in what his last available knowledge of their direction told him was away from the right side of the building. The truck halted, jerked them both forward violently, and then stalled. He blinked his vision back into being to find that he had managed to miss the orphanage by a good three feet. Edward’s left hand was clamped to the dashboard and he was staring out the windshield as though he were witnessing some supernatural event. His skin had gone so white that his pallor rivalled Jonathan’s, but before he could ask if he was all right Edward abruptly shoved open the door and vomited out the side of the truck. 

Jonathan had only seen him like this one other time, but it was how he knew Edward liked to have a reassuring hand on his shoulder when he was taken ill. Edward’s shrugging off of that hand told him the standoffishness had not been the result of him simply not wanting to talk due to feeling unwell; no, it was due to something else.

Or perhaps this was just how he was, now, and Jonathan had been too sick to notice. Of the two, this option was both the worse and made the most sense.

When Edward was finished he blew his nose on one of his ever-present handkerchiefs, wordlessly got up, and went inside. Jonathan had to lean across the bench to pull the door shut, and after he had done so he sat there for another minute or so. He almost got the impression he’d… failed, somehow. He had never before been so blind to such a drastic change in behaviour in someone he knew as deeply and extensively as he did Edward. On the offhand chance he was incorrect in his prediction about how Edward _should_ have been behaving, there was one more thing he could try in order to prove his theory.

It was the only time in recent memory he had ever hoped to be wrong.

Jonathan made his way into the orphanage, pausing when he got into the foyer. He didn’t know where he was going nor where Edward had gone. Well, he had an _idea_ of where Edward had gone. He probably had rituals for this kind of situation which involved brushing his teeth and washing his hands too many times. That was a problem Jonathan was not yet ready to tackle. Not until he had the strength to get Edward to admit to having it, anyway. But that was a dilemma for later. Right now he needed to locate the kitchen. His knee throbbed as though to remind him of what a hassle walking was becoming, and all he could do just then was sigh to himself and try to ignore it.

By the time Edward reappeared Jonathan had located what had probably been some sort of playroom, which included a tired beige couch sagging across from an older model television. He had only been half watching it to begin with, but even if he hadn’t been the sight of Edward in t-shirt and pyjama pants was more to look at than whatever it could possibly have been showing. He held the peppermint tea out to Edward as he approached, but when he took it he just put it down on the table in front of the couch and sat down. _Next_ to Jonathan, instead of on top of him as he’d expected. “Did we make the news?” he asked, crossing one leg over his other knee. Jonathan was having a little trouble understanding this change in behaviour and why he was expecting them to appear on television. Did he think they’d been recognised?

“Not yet,” he answered. 

And then Edward said… nothing. He just stared at the screen with his posture closed entirely. It didn’t make any sense. Jonathan’s memory of the last several months was not stellar, but he was fairly certain that Edward had not previously shown the ability to sit next to him without touching him up to three different ways. 

Jonathan was barely paying attention when the newscast did turn to their evenings’ activity, which apparently included… burning the building down. The reporter mentioned an elderly man who simply refused to understand that there were no fries, on which they laid blame for the entire incident and vowed never again to allow him into another one of their establishments, and while they did not yet have a source for the blaze Jonathan did not need to hear it. 

He had fired the manager ‘in a manner of speaking’.

“You threw the cigarette in the trash can,” Jonathan said.

“The paper recycling, actually,” said Edward. Jonathan’s brow furrowed. 

“… _why_?” he asked. Edward was not usually so destructive.

“They were being rude,” Edward answered, scratching his foot. “I got tired of it. I mean, everyone could see they had fries. They simply didn’t want to give them to you.”

“You… burned down a building because they were being _rude_?” Jonathan asked, baffled. Edward frowned.

“What do you care?” he demanded. “It’s exactly the sort of thing _you_ would do. Why does it matter if I do it?”

Jonathan didn’t have an answer and it was entirely because Edward’s eyes had gone cold. Cold in a way that Jonathan knew very well, as it had been a part of his own reflection almost every time he’d seen it. The difference that this was not curated. It was not intentional. It was… a sign. Edward was losing himself to the brokenness.

From the day they had met, Jonathan had known him to be that way. Edward was selfish, arrogant, and demanding, on top of being intelligent, attractive, and clever beyond all measure. But the most interesting thing about him was how he somehow managed to be wildly successful despite being so exquisitely broken. He had spent his entire life proving who he wasn’t, and with every year that went by he got a little more desperate to do so. Jonathan had thought he would know when he was going too far. He had thought it was going to be obvious – like ‘burning down a McDonald’s because of some rude teenagers’ obvious. But apparently it was not. Edward could no longer see beyond his persona. Worse, Jonathan no longer had any idea of the difference. They spoke the same, dressed the same, had all of the same goals and motivations. Scarecrow was a monster, but not one Jonathan was at risk of losing himself to. He’d made sure of that. He had ensured he would never become lost in the costume as Edward was doing right now. If there even _was_ an Edward anymore. Jonathan had no way of knowing. 

There might be one way.

“Have you thought about your promise at all lately?”

Edward frowned at him sideways. “Why?”

“We can’t do this forever.”

“ _You_ can’t.”

There was his answer. He looked back at the television and tried to think of when it had been, exactly, that Edward had disappeared into himself. What day, what time, what event should Jonathan have been looking out to prevent?

No. It would not have mattered, even if he’d known of it long before it had happened. Jonathan could not change Edward’s mind any more than he could halt the passage of time. It was a reckless force all its own, trapped in its own maze of what it thought to be impeccable logic. It was more akin to a hamster wheel, the occupant of which thought would stop squeaking if only they ran fast enough.

“This timeline you’re going to have everyone on,” Edward said, and Jonathan came back to himself to see that he had a half-finished cigarette in his mouth, “is ridiculously tight. You’re aware of that?”

“We’ve discussed this,” Jonathan answered evenly.

“What we _haven’t_ discussed,” Edward said, staring at some point above the television, “is what a hindrance our relationship will be with that sort of timetable.”

… _hindrance_?

Edward inhaled the cigarette until it had burned all the way to the filter, which he leaned over and pressed into an ashtray Jonathan hadn’t even noticed was there. “Therefore,” he went on, “I believe we should take a break.”

“A break,” Jonathan repeated, having no idea what that meant.

“Yes,” said Edward, leaning back into the couch and spreading his arms overtop of it, somehow managing to avoid touching Jonathan. “It’s in our best interests.”

It was in _Scarecrow’s and Riddler’s_ best interests. It was not in _Jonathan’s_ best interest at all. It probably wasn’t even in _Edward’s_ , given this strange and unexplainable behaviour. But what option did he have but to go along with it? Edward did not understand. Edward had had other partners, colleagues, _friends_. Jonathan had one person and one person only, and just then he was being forced to question if he had even that. 

No. He forced the emotionality back and focused on what this _truly_ meant. Everything Edward did had two distinct meanings and Jonathan needed to find that which was subconscious. 

It wasn’t the first time Edward had proposed they break up. It was what he did when he could not think of what else to do. Edward was and would always be the only man Jonathan had ever loved, but he was too old and too tired for this. He was still doing the same childish things he’d always done. He’d grown older but he still hadn’t grown up.

Perhaps it was Jonathan’s turn to break up with _him_.

He stood up.

“Very well,” he said, “but know this: if you are not ready to go when this is all over, I am leaving without you.”

Edward’s laugh had suddenly become ugly. “You won’t make it without me.”

Edward – the old Edward, the one who Jonathan had unfortunately fallen for while attempting to manipulate him into a partnership all those years ago – would never have disrespected Jonathan like that. He didn’t want to do it, but he was going to have to. It might be the only chance Jonathan had left to make him understand. The only thing worse than Edward changing his mind was Edward beginning to lose it. If that happened then they both would have lost everything.

Jonathan slapped him across the face.

The coldness in his eyes was gone but now he looked instead as though he were going to cry. He raised one hand to the place Jonathan’s had been and said, in a shocked whisper, “You hit me.”

“You can have your break,” Jonathan said, his hand still stinging from where it had connected with Edward’s cheek, “and I will put up with whatever this is you’re doing – for now. But you _will not_ ,” and here his voice rose involuntarily in what was part of only a handful of times in his entire life, “speak to me that way. If this is how you are going to behave, there is no break. It will be permanent. I will leave and you will not hear from me again.”

Edward still had one hand barely touching his face. His cheeks were wet, and Jonathan had the horrible wrenching need to sit down and apologise and comfort him. But he couldn’t. Edward was not a boy, he was a man, and he needed to understand that his behaviour _had consequences_. If he didn’t, or if he chose not to, there was not a damned thing Jonathan could do about it. 

Perhaps a break really was in their best interests.

He walked towards the doorway, but there he stopped. Edward had drawn his folded arms tightly across his chest, and he was staring at the wall as he breathed through his slightly open mouth. 

“I am sorry that I hit you,” Jonathan said, more calmly. “You know that I have no desire to hurt you. But if I have truly lost your respect, then there is nothing here for me to come back to.”

Edward brought up one of his hands, pressing the heel into his forehead.

Jonathan had nothing else to say, so he made his way out of the Orphanage to stand on the front porch. The sun was just beginning to rise, the sky making his truck appear purple instead of blue. Or perhaps his eyesight was simply worse than he thought it was.

“I don’t know why I burned the building down.”

He didn’t turn around. Not until he felt Edward’s hand on his arm. When Edward pressed both hands into Jonathan’s shoulders and his face into Jonathan’s chest, there was nothing in the world that could have stopped Jonathan from holding him.

“Jon, I… I don’t know what to do anymore. I think… I think I’m losing my mind.”

He definitely was, if he hadn’t already, but there was nothing anyone but himself could do about it. So Jonathan said nothing.

When Edward let go some minutes later, he did not look at Jonathan. So he raised his voice a little when he said,

“The man I care for is the one who understood why I wanted the fries so badly. He’s the one who went to the thankless effort of putting me back in one piece and the one who not only looked Batman in the eye and got nary a bruise to show for it, but drove him to protect both of our reputations. He doesn’t do things without thinking them through and he definitely does not forget that we are equals. That man I can do without.”

Edward’s nod was directed at the wood beneath their feet. 

“I don’t want to leave without you,” Jonathan told him. “And maybe you’re right. Maybe I can’t. Maybe I have let too much go on for too long. But I would rather die along the way than live with you acting as though I am beholden to you for getting me there.”

Edward looked him in the eye for the first time. “As you should.”

Jonathan nodded once and got into his truck. As he started it he saw that Edward had sat down and started smoking again. Thank God it was only cigarettes and not sex or drugs or alcohol. 

His palm should not still have stung, but it did. He was a man who seldom regretted anything, but he knew he would regret hitting Edward for the rest of his life. There were two lines he had tried never to cross and now only one was left. He gripped the top of the steering wheel with his right hand and ran his left down the side of his face as he idled at a red light. 

If ever he had cause to lie to Edward, then he would know all had truly been lost.

When he reached his destination it was daybreak, and he took out his phone to ensure he had the right address. Twenty minutes ago Edward had sent, _The break begins when you let me know you arrived without wrapping that truck of yours around a tree._

He stared at it for a long time.

If he never answered, the break never started. That was a loophole. Wasn’t it?

No. The world didn’t work like that.

_It appears I may have managed it._

He didn’t answer, though Jonathan did not really expect him to. He climbed out of the truck and put his phone and his hands into his pockets and looked up at the building. The one that was to be his home until this was all over. He thought about the couch at the orphanage and the part where Edward should have smiled and taken the tea from his hand and fallen asleep in his lap. But that was an Edward who would not have let him make a fuss at the McDonald’s and would instead have merely taken him to another one. He would have understood Jonathan’s motives, but he would also have ensured he knew how stupid he was being when there was another place to go not too far down the road. And he would never, ever have done something as emotionally, thoughtlessly destructive as burning down a building because of what had happened within it.

His thumb was rubbing up and down the side of his phone. Edward had given it to him. It would be easier to use than the flip phone, he’d said. Jonathan didn’t know the truth of that just yet. He was probably right. He was losing himself but he still knew the regular things that Edward knew. His other hand was clenching and unclenching against his thigh through his jeans, not really because it helped with the pain but because it was distracting. He took the phone out and reread Edward’s last message. He needed to hear to know.

When Edward answered, Jonathan almost wished he hadn’t. What could he say that Edward would heed? There was nothing. He had to wait and hope and trust that Edward would finally, finally look at himself and realise how far he had gone. And if he couldn’t, then... Jonathan would have to go.

Nothing had driven him so close to tears in decades.

“I truly regret hitting you,” he said, without thinking, and Edward’s reply was both dull and hopeless:

“I deserved it.”

As horrible as that answer was, it told Jonathan everything he needed to know. He nodded to himself, put the phone away, and pulled open the doors to the building.

**Author's Note:**

> This wasn't supposed to be so tragic, but here we are.


End file.
